US and North Korea emerge from talks poles apart

6.00pm

BEIJING - The United States and North Korea emerged from four days of nuclear crisis talks on Saturday as far apart as ever, with Washington insisting Pyongyang disclose its uranium enrichment programme, diplomats said.

The North continues to deny the existence of such a programme, the issue which triggered the crisis 20 months ago and led to three rounds of inconclusive talks in Beijing.

The third round closed with a bland agreement to meet again before September and a pledge to take the first steps to resolve the crisis "as soon as possible", according to a statement by Wang Yi, chief negotiator for the host nation, China.

China's Foreign Ministry said on Friday the parties had agreed that a freeze of the North's nuclear programmes should be a first step.

One of the biggest sticking points preventing a breakthrough was the US insistence that Pyongyang has an uranium enrichment programme for making bombs, a diplomatic source in Beijing said.

North Korea stressed its readiness to freeze plutonium-based nuclear facilities but it adamantly refused to accept the US demand that it admit to having a uranium enrichment programme.

North Korea also rejected proposals by the United States and Japan to allow experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect its nuclear facilities for verification, the source said, adding that Pyongyang had demanded a "different form of inspection".

North Korea pulled out of international agreements on non-proliferation and threw out IAEA inspectors just weeks after the crisis erupted in October 2002, when US officials said Pyongyang had admitted to a clandestine nuclear programme.

The discussions in Beijing, which began on Wednesday, were buoyed at the outset by the first detailed US proposal to end the crisis. It offered Pyongyang security guarantees and South Korean aid in return for a pledge by North Korea to fully dismantle its nuclear programmes.

However, they were quickly overshadowed by North Korea's warning that hawks in Pyongyang might push for a nuclear test if no headway was made at the talks between the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and host China.

The US overture was its first serious, detailed proposal since President George W Bush took office and labelled the reclusive North as part of an "axis of evil" alongside Iran and pre-war Iraq.

Despite the gulf between the sides, US officials have said it was important that the North was looking at the American offer and had voluntarily identified the freeze as a first step towards dismantlement.

"We are far from agreement," one US official in Beijing said on Friday.

The US plan hinges on North Korea scrapping its nuclear programmes but the North has put forward its own plan demanding rewards in return for simply freezing its activities.

The North's comments about a nuclear test, made in a meeting of more than two hours between US Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly and North Korean negotiators in Beijing on Thursday, resembled previous warnings, US officials said.

The stir over the North's statements -- classified by some US officials as threats -- hung over the talks, leaving it unclear whether the sides could narrow their differences. Diplomats in Beijing played down the statement.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged China, the North's closest ally and provider of two thirds of its food and energy aid, to use its influence to discourage Pyongyang from an atomic test.

- REUTERS